The effect of masks on infants' ability to fast-map and generalize new words.

Young children today are exposed to masks on a regular basis. However, there is limited empirical evidence on how masks may affect word learning. The study explored the effect of masks on infants' abilities to fast-map and generalize new words. Seventy-two Chinese infants (43 males, Mage = 18.26 months) were taught two novel word-object pairs by a speaker with or without a mask. They then heard the words and had to visually identify the correct objects and also generalize words to a different speaker and objects from the same category. Eye-tracking results indicate that infants looked longer at the target regardless of whether a speaker wore a mask. They also looked longer at the speaker's eyes than at the mouth only when words were taught through a mask. Thus, fast-mapping and generalization occur in both masked and not masked conditions as infants can flexibly access different visual cues during word-learning.

The Effect of China's Health Insurance on the Labor Supply of Middle-aged and Elderly Farmers.

Social security primarily improves residents' welfare and ensures labor market sustainability. This study presents a new view of the association between health insurance and labor supply by using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. The results reveal that the health insurance system has a remarkable effect on labor supply. The health insurance coverage tends to encourage middle-aged and elderly farmers to increase their farm labor participation rate and working time, especially for their household agricultural labor participation rate and working time. However, it also reduces the non-farm labor participation rate and working time. Different types of health insurance have diverse effects on labor supply. The new cooperative medical insurance has a stronger pull-back effect. It encourages the middle-aged and elderly farmers to leave the urban non-farm sector and transfer to rural areas to engage in their household agricultural work. The urban employee medical insurance encourages farmers to reduce self-employed labor supply and increase employed work. The supplemental health insurance tends to reduce the labor supply of farm employed and non-farm labor supply, but improve the farm labor supply. Furthermore, urban resident medical insurance and government medical insurance encourage farmers to quit directly from the labor market. In conclusion, the health insurance system is facilitating change in the labor market. Policy-makers should pay full attention to such impacts while improving the health insurance system's design and operation in China.

To Express or to End? Personality Traits Are Associated With the Reasons and Patterns for Using Emojis and Stickers.

Emojis and stickers are becoming increasingly popular in computer-mediated communications. The present study examined the associations between personality traits and people's reasons and patterns for using both emojis and stickers. Participants (n = 312) completed three online questionnaires assessing shyness, the Big Five personality traits, and why and how they used emojis and stickers. Results revealed that shyness, neuroticism, extraversion, and agreeableness were correlated with different reasons of usage. Moreover, some participants exhibited a tendency to adjust frequency of usage depending on who the target person was and whether they were in a private or group chat. People who showed such tendencies were found to differ in personality with those who did not. Some differences in usage patterns were also observed between emojis and stickers. Together, the present study has produced more insight into how emojis and stickers can help people with different personality traits to achieve different purposes in their daily communication.

Appreciating language conventions: thirteen-month-old Chinese infants understand that word generalization is shared practice.

Language is conventional because word meanings are shared among different people. The present study examined Chinese infants' understanding of the language convention that different people should generalize words in the same way. Thirteen-month-old Mandarin-speaking Chinese infants repeatedly viewed a speaker providing a novel label for a target object in the presence of a distractor object. Next, the objects changed colour and infants viewed the same speaker and a new speaker providing the label for either the different coloured target or distractor. They were also asked by both speakers to locate the correct referent of the label. Results revealed that infants expected both speakers to generalize the label to objects that belonged to the target category. This is the first evidence demonstrating that Chinese infants perceive word generalization as a form of shared convention.

Do Great Minds Prefer Alike? Thirteen-Month-Old Infants Generalize Personal Preferences Across Objects of Like Kind but Not Across People.

Human preferences are person specific because different individuals do not necessarily have the same preference. Although existing empirical evidence demonstrates that infants have a basic understanding about people's preferences, there remained one question as to whether infants appreciate that a person's preference can be generalized to objects that belong to the same kind. This study addressed this gap with 13-month-old Chinese infants. In Experiment 1, infants were first habituated to an actor preferring a target object over a different shaped distractor object. Next, the objects' position and colors were changed and infants watched the actor from habituation and a new actor each alternated preference between the two objects. Results revealed that infants looked longer at the event when the old actor preferred the distractor object. Throughout the experiment, infants were also presented with additional tests in which each actor requested them to visually identify his or her preferred object. Results showed that infants identified the different colored target object for the old actor but not for the new actor. Experiment 2 removed the additional tests and replicated the results of Experiment 1. Experiment 3 confirmed that 13-month olds could differentiate the two different colored target objects. Together, the present findings provide the first known evidence that 13-month olds expect object preferences to be generalized across objects of like kind but not necessarily across individuals. Such sensitivity to the rules guiding preference generalization could help infants predict people' behaviors and facilitate more successful social interactions.